That 2% cut in Social Security taxes (from 6.2% to 4.2%) was supposed to stimulate the economy. But according to Martin Crutsinger’s and David Pitt’s recent article on Blomberg BusinessWeek, the tax cut has little impact on the economy in January. Consumers increased spending by only 0.2% in January, the smallest increase since last June. … Continue Reading
Retirement plans can get get pretty complicated also, but "fixing" one doesn’t necessarily have to be. That’s the focus of the recent IRS announcement reaching out to employers who did not timely amend their Plans for EGTRRA. Here’s the background. Most retirement plans had to be amended and restated no later than April 30, 2010 to … Continue Reading
That’s Bob Walker on the cover of his new book, How Am I EVER Going to Retire? If you’re in the investment business and have had – or have – to pass the Series 6, 7, 63, 65, or 66, you may know who Bob is. He’s the owner of Pass The Test, Inc., the … Continue Reading
There’s a new retirement plan design available, and it’s called a DB(k) Plan. What exactly is it? As the name and visual metaphor suggest, it’s a combination retirement plan that allows an employer to provide both 401(k) benefits and pension benefits (traditional defined benefit or Cash Balance). DB(k) Plans were added to the Pension Protection … Continue Reading
The Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 permits in-plan rollovers to a Roth account effective for all distributions made after Sept. 27, 2010. Prior to this law, Participants had to roll money out of their retirement plan to a Roth IRA to invest after-tax. In 2010 only, a one-time special tax rule allows a rollover … Continue Reading
I’ve seen it first hand with many employees eligible to participate in 401(k) plans. That is, employees who choose not to save for retirement. Sometimes, there’s a logical and personal reason. But sometimes, it’s just … procrastination. And that part of it, I could never understand. But I now have a little more insight thanks … Continue Reading
Every year the Internal Revenue Service announces the cost-of-living adjustments applicable to qualified retirement plans for the following year. The limits will remain unchanged for the second consecutive year. Following are the key retirement plan limits for 2011 recently announced by the Internal Revenue Service: 401(k) and 403(b) Deferrals: $16,500 Catch-Up for Age 50 and … Continue Reading
Earlier this week, over 125 brokers, consultants, advisers attended the 5th Annual Employee Benefit Adviser Summit in Boca Raton, Florida. Looking Into The Future: What You and Your Clients Will Look Like. Here’s a link to Employee Benefit Adviser’s report, Advisers Find Opportunities in Change at EBA Summit. My own presentation at one of the … Continue Reading
Pictured up top is one of several seminar invitations that the national marketing company, Seminar Direct, makes available to financial professionals who want to promote their services through direct mail and seminars. In this case, it’s Roth IRAs, first made available by Congress in 1997 under the Taxpayer Relief Act. For the most part the … Continue Reading
A little over a year ago, I postulated on the the psychology behind today’s economy. The old economy, I said, was personified in the classic “Greed is good” speech by Gordon Gekko as played by Michael Douglas in the 1987 Oliver Stone classic, Wall Street. Gekko returns in Stone’s sequel, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. … Continue Reading
Those are the great Isely Brothers pictured off to the left whose music I grew up with. Memories of which were brought back to me by an article written by a kindred pop culture soul. And with no disrespect intended, in of all places, a big Washington, D.C. law firm. It’s David Fuller, a Partner in Morgan Lewis’s … Continue Reading
Pardon the pun, but more employers are indeed achieving cost and operating efficiencies when the payroll system and 401(k) administration can directly talk to each other. In the unconnected world, there are a multitude of steps that need to be done in order to get the employee’s 401(k) contribution into the 401(k) recordkeeper’s platform. With … Continue Reading
Unlike the money belt pictured above, the dollars charged for 401(k) services will start to become more apparent under the recently published Department of Labor Interim Final Regulation on Improved Fee Disclosure. Going forward, I’ll be commenting on the new rules as they start to impact service providers, plan sponsors, and employees. That’s I call … Continue Reading
I could have gone with Verizon’s "Can You Hear Me Now" Guy as my visual metaphor for this blog post. But then I found out that there isn’t one “Can You Hear Me Now" Guy but many. Verizon has a thick rulebook which Gizmodo reports spells out the rules on how Guy should dress and … Continue Reading
Our friend Roger Wohlner, a fee-only financial planner, who blogs at Chicago Financial Planner, sent me an email after reading the Marshall McLuhan reference in yesterday’s post, Communicating 401(k): Is the Medium the Message? Roger reminded me about McLuhan’s cameo in Woody Allen’s classic 1977 firm, Annie Hall. Thanks, Roger. The rest of you may … Continue Reading
If you’re not of my generation, then let me introduce you to Marshall McLuhan by way of this YouTube video. McLuhan, one of the visionary thinkers in the momentous decade of the 1960s, coined the expression "the medium is the message" which he introduced in his most widely known book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of … Continue Reading
There’s an old expression among tax practitioners referring to taxpayers who know there is a potential tax problem, but are willing to take their chances. They’re “playing audit roulette”. Not a good thing for plan sponsors to do with stepped compliance activities by the Internal Revenue Services and the Department of Labor who have … Continue Reading
No, that’s not my high school graduation picture. It’s a Microsoft staff photo from December 7, 1978 from the StateMaster website. Yes, that’s Bill Gates on the bottom row left, and co-founder Paul Allen on the bottom row right. The company was just three years old and still located in Albuquerque before it moved to … Continue Reading
Defined benefit plans and defined contribution plans – "apples and oranges" , right? Conceptually, yes. In a defined benefit plan, it’s the employer who has to fund the promised benefit, but it’s the employee who contributes and generally invests his or her account in a defined contribution plan, e.g., 401(k). But in the real world … Continue Reading
That’s Declan Patrick MacManus pictured above, but we know him by his stage name Elvis Costello, the English singer-songwriter of Irish heritage. The picture is actually the cover art for Watching the Detectives, the 1977 single by Elvis Costello and his backing band, the Attractions, which gave him his first UK hit single. It’s my … Continue Reading
For a business owner choosing a retirement plan, it’s kinda like those compare and contrast essay questions on college exams. Except this time, it’s real life and a lot more complicated than the venn diagram pictured above. Fortunately, our friend Denise Appleby at her Appleby Retirement Dictionary has provided a handy and comprehensive chart comparing … Continue Reading
I was thinking recently about the late Shel Silverstein (September 25, 1932 – May 9, 1999). He was an incredibly talented Chicago guy whose creativity reached across the socio-economic spectrum as a poet, singer-songwriter, musician, composer, cartoonist, screenwriter and author of children’s books. (And no, dear, it wasn’t about me running out and getting a … Continue Reading
That’s a picture of a transparent memory chip developed by a group of South Korean scientists that Mark Wilson reports on in his December 17, 2008 blog post, Researchers Develop Transparent Memory, See-Through Electronics Next. Mr. Wilson calls it the precursor to completely transparent electronics. So imagine that this technology is incorporated into the new … Continue Reading
That’s a picture of the oldest message in a bottle. It spent 92 years 229 days at sea according to the Guinness Book of World Records. A bottom drift bottle, numbered 423B, was released at 60º 50’N 00º 38’W on 25 April 1914 and recovered by fisherman, Mark Anderson of Bixter, Shetland, UK, at 60º … Continue Reading
